Magnitude 6.8, Thursday, December 20 2007 at 8:55 pm NZDT , 50 km south-east of Gisborne at 38.86̊S x 178.52̊E.
Reports from Gisborne vary between “considerable” to “moderate” damage; but no injuries have (yet) been reported.
The quake was felt all the way down to Christchurch.

Earthquakes with a Richter magnitude of 6.1 to 6.9 can be destructive in areas up to about 100 kilometers across where people live, often causing much damage to buildings: chimneys fall, houses move on foundations.

The Richter is a logarithmic scale, meaning that the numbers on the scale measure factors of 10. So, for example, an earthquake that measures 4.0 on the Richter scale is 10 times larger than one that measures 3.0. The maximum quake rating ever measured (Indonesia's Sumatra quake/tsunami, December 26, 2004) was about 8.9.

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Gord May "If you didn't have the time or money to do it right in the first place, when will you get the time/$ to fix it?"

Shhhh! Don't tell everyone. With a bit of luck, I may have got away with it :-)
I felt the rocking. But we get those so often, you get used to it. What I have learn't is that you can tell by the motion if the quake was large but far away, (which this one was), or small but closer. I sit right on top of the biggest fault line we have. Seafox and Marauder do too. We are all waiting for the long over due "bigone". When this fault line lets go, it is usually in the high 7's from viewing past records. The last one was 7.8 and the Wellington Airport now stands on what was once sea before that quake.
Anyway, back to the quake of last night. A few buildings were damaged and the Central Business District (CBD) is closed today. No one was hurt. The quake centre was 50Km off shore. Interestingly, the epicentre sits very close to an area that has been highlighted as a possible Tsunami causing geographical feature. A large area of silt and sand sitting on the top edge of a huge drop. Scientists are worried the soft silt may go over the edge, creating an enormus water movement what would result in a huge Tidal wave. We don't get Tidal waves often here. Nothing big in known Human times, but there is evedence of Waves being created by these features that are scattered around the country, that have created walls of water well over 150ft high.Seismicity Map

If you take note of the pictures above. You will see on the first one, the years and magitude of past quakes for just this region alone. On the picture below that, you wil not lots of dots in colours from Orange to Blue. The colour represents the depth of the quake. Not that the orange is on one side(east) and the blue on the other(West). That is the affect of one plate diving below the other. So the Westerly "Tasman" plate is going under the the Easterly Pacific Plate. The region in the middle is the mountanous backbone of NZ.

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Unprepared boaters, end up as floatsum!.......